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NHWstandards
Welcome, contributor! These standards are meant as a guide to creating and editing pages on the Natural Health Wiki (NHW). It is by no means a requirement that you learn these by heart before editing a page; if you feel you have a valuable contribution, simply add it to the relevant page and, if necessary, someone will adjust it to fit the format of the NHW. New contributors First of all: welcome! It's nice to have you around, and we look forward reading your contributions. We strongly recommend that you create a . In this manner we might get to know you, once you've made a few edits, and this will help your integration into the community on this site. Also, it'll ease the detection and prevention of spammers and others of that ilk. Likewise, all contributors are encouraged to maintain good netiquette. It is our hope and intention that these pages should be a positive collaboration, not a battle ground for personal beliefs and the like. Remember, stress is bad for you! General layout For the general layout of an article, please see the Standard page. A few further guidelines to help make the NHW appear inviting and easy to use: *All text should be written in English; this wiki is meant for everyone, so a single, international language has been chosen. At some point in the future international editions of the Natural Health Wiki may be relevant, but for now let's focus on this (the english) edition. Try contacting one of the if you require help with translations from your own language; chances are that someone will speak your language, and your additions can be incorporated through team work. *All pages should start with a short description of the page's content; the intention is that no one should be forced to read the entire article to learn its topic. A brief synopsis will allow the reader to decide whether or not to delve in to the more detailed text to follow. *The first time the keyword of the page is mentioned in the text - ideally in the very first paragraph - it should be put in bold letters. This is done by adding three apostrophes at the beginning and the end of the word, thus: bold. *If a keyword could (or, indeed, should) point to another NHW article it should do so; however, an interwiki link should only be made on the first mention of that particular topic. It is accomplished by enveloping the word(s) in two square brackets. An example: diet - which will, of course, point to the article diet. *Please make sure to write a brief summary of your edits in the box just below the editing window; this will help admins and others maintain an overview of the site and greatly facilitate it's general maintenance - which could otherwise become a near insurmountable task. *You should always sign edits to discussions (or talk pages), while contributions to articles should never be signed. A signature is easily created by putting four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your text, or simply clicking the signature button, located second from the right just above the editing window. The button should look something like this: 20px Older versions of Wikia may display the button like this: 100px References References are strongly encouraged as an integral part of every article. There's a lot of hear-say and rumour circulating the Web in particular and the World in general concerning nutrition and health; similarly there are many different schools of thought on the topic. The only way to avoid mud slinging and general unpleasantness is to make sure every claim is well grounded in proper documentation and research. There are three main ways of providing this documentation: Journals and other scientific articles When data is thoroughly researched, a paper or an article is usually published to announce the study's conlusion. Please use the template to reference the appropriate article. Litterature Any reference to hardcopy texts should be as richly informative as possible. The aim is to make retrieving the information from that particular book or magazine as easy as possible. Therefore, please include edition and ISBN number when applicable. Also, a reference to the particular page(s) in which the information can be found could prove invaluable. It is highly recommended that the template be used. Links The Internet provides a plethora of valuable information. Whenever applicable a clickable link should be included in the references sektion of an article. If you are unsure of how to enter the link in the proper Wiki format, simply type it in a parenthesis where it applies to the text, and another editor will take care of the mechanics for you. Please make sure, however, that the link you provide is as precise as possible; the idea is still to make the information as readily available to the reader as possible. Thus it is much more desirable to have a link on "the positive effects of Vitamin C on cancer tumors" point than to, say, Preferably, that same link should be found only in the references section of the article rather than integrated into the text as shown here. Please use the template to this end. Brands and products As a general rule there's no problem with including articles on specific brands or products. It cannot be stressed enough, however, that these articles should always be written from a Neutral Point of View (NPOV) and that commercials, unsupported claims (as in claims not well documented by valid research) and biased text will be summarily removed. Articles from Wikipedia As a general rule it's quite all right to 'borrow' material from Wikipedia; all content on both pages is published through the CC-BY-SA license. Copying directly, however, is rarely a good idea; it is often better (and easier) to transcribe the bits of the WP article needed, and leave the rest out. Should you decide to copy material anyway, please make sure that all references etc. are copied along with the original content, and that the page is credited to Wikipedia by adding the Template . Also, not all templates and other references used in Wikipedia are relevant for the Natural Health Wiki; these should be removed when copying material. Again, if you're unsure of how to do this, try contacting another editor with more experience, or (of all else fails) simply edit the text as best you're able; someone will see your work and make the necessary adjustments. Please bear in mind, also, that articles from Wikipedia aren't better or worth more than articles from the Natural Health Wiki, nor vice versa; each project has a different aim, which means that information should be weighed differently according to the goal of the project. Thus articles from Wikipedia may form an excellent basis for articles here, but are subject to the same rules of editing that other articles are. Images By all means, please add images where relevant! Images help illustrate points no end - and besides, they make for a much more pleasing and interesting article. A few pointers, however: * Please make sure that the image you use is released under a free license, as per [http://www.wikia.com/Wikia:Terms_of_use Wikia's Terms of Use]. Generally, Commons will have an image to illustrate what you need. Another advantage is that images on Commons can be inserted directly on NHW's pages. * Although it is possible to set a fixed size of an image, it is generally not a good idea to do so. Readers today have many different media available, all capable of browsing these articles; what looks fantastic on a 22'' computer screen may be very dominating on a 4'' hand held device. * Even though images are fantastic, too much of a good thing can spoil the effect. When adding more images to an article, please make sure that they display something not already illustrated. This is about information, after all, not illustration. Category:Mechanics